The Whitney Plantation, a special place carefully designed to teach about slavery

John Cummings at the Whitney Plantation
Source: The Atlantic video about the Whitney Foundation
John Cummings founded the Whitney Plantation to educate the country about our national legacy of slavery and has spent $8 million over 15 years on this project. He says, “This isn’t black history, this is American history .. it was very shocking to me that I didn’t know about slavery … I had no idea of how deprived they were, not by force of circumstance, but by deliberate planning … We’re not finished.”

Ibrahima Seck
Source: The Atlantic’s video about the Whitney Foundation

The museum and memorial’s Director of Research, Ibrahima Seck, says today, “People need to understand what happened on these plantations … why so many people are in jail, so much poverty, black people being shot and killed like game. All that is rooted in slavery.” read more